Sealed Super Mario Bros. Sells for $3 Million, an All-Time Auction Record

The Number

A factory-sealed NES copy of Super Mario Bros. graded PSA 9.6 A++ sold for $3 million at Heritage Auctions' Video Games Signature Auction, the highest price ever paid for a video game at public auction. It clears the previous $2 million benchmark, itself a private sale from 2021, and comfortably beats the $1.56 million paid for Super Mario 64 at public auction in July 2021.

Where It Came From

The provenance is the genuinely interesting part. According to Heritage Consignment Director for Video Games Evan Masingill, the copy "was just discovered a few months ago inside a brand new Control Deck NES console bundle, meaning it has not been touched for nearly 40 years." It is one of only three known sealed examples carrying the gloss sticker from the game's second production run, which is the sort of distinction that separates a valuable copy from a record breaking one.

The Rest of the Sale

The same auction cycle produced a sealed 1986 NES Deluxe Set with R.O.B., Duck Hunt, Gyromite and the Zapper at $120,000, a CGC 9.4 A+ sealed Super Mario Bros. 3 at $108,000, and a CGC 9.4 A+ sealed 1987 Legend of Zelda at $48,000. Those numbers are worth noting because they show the wider graded market has not collapsed, despite several years of commentary predicting exactly that.

What It Means for Everyone Else

Very little, which is the point worth making. Sealed graded copies trade as collectibles that happen to be shaped like games, in a market disconnected from the one where people actually buy things to play them. A loose cartridge of Super Mario Bros. remains one of the most common objects in the hobby and can be had for the price of a takeaway. The $3 million copy will never be opened, which means the one thing it definitively cannot do is be a game.

Sources: Intelligent Collector